In this special episode of The QSR Experience Show at the National Restaurant Association Show, we chatted with Erin Newkirk, Chief Brand & Marketing Officer at Caribou Coffee. Erin shares insights on the importance of personalization in marketing, emphasizing the need to tailor efforts across various channels like TikTok and Instagram.
Erin also discusses the critical role of integrating customer feedback through social listening and location-based insights to enhance the customer experience. She also highlights some of Caribou Coffee’s innovative campaigns, including a creative TikTok dating show aimed at engaging Gen Z audiences.
Topics discussed:
- Tailoring marketing efforts to different channels like TikTok and Instagram to meet guests where they are.
- Utilizing social listening and location-based feedback to enhance the customer experience.
- Launching creative campaigns, such as a TikTok dating show, to engage younger audiences like Gen Z.
- The importance of having a solid brand architecture when expanding from a few locations to several hundred stores.
- Ensuring employees are informed and engaged to provide a great customer experience.
- Identifying themes and key drivers from customer feedback at both micro and macro levels.
- Encouraging marketers to be curious, ask questions, and be more interested to create compelling campaigns.
- Leveraging data from customer surveys and feedback for informed decision-making in marketing.
Guest Quotes:
“I actually ran into the Caribou job through a mutual friend and connection. And because at Caribou, we’re such a purposeful brand, and I really have spent my entire career trying to chase that. Win win. Yeah, it’s really been a great fit. So here I am, lots of different industries’ experience, a lot of great experience.”
“Yeah, I think the first thing and we refer back to it often is just really understanding your brand truth. Right. Understanding who you are, what you stand for, what is your difference that makes a difference? The rest of it can build, and there are going to be times when you’re going to be challenged because all of a sudden the financials look really different when you’re at 500 stores versus when you were at five.”
“It’s one that we can play in as a scrappy and growing brand where, you know, we’re not about to necessarily go buy airtime on you. You know, even connected tv is a little bit of a stretch for us. Right. We do a lot in the social realm, and we wanted to make something really interesting and fun.”
“And then we work a lot out of our store locations, which I think is really important, too. Not to get in the way, but definitely to observe and to understand how things are going, especially during, you know, launch days and launch weeks, to understand as LTOs or, you know, limited time offerings coming in and going out.”
“And I think we’re pretty authentic. You know, we have a really large loyalty member base and we’re really authentic about the fact, like, listen, we’re, we are, we do care about what you’re consuming. Yeah. We want to make your experience better for you. So please take these surveys, let us know.”
Get in touch with Erin Newkirk:
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Website
Get in touch with your host, Bobby Marhamat:
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